


Rest Stop

by Liana Mir (scribblemyname)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Confessions, F/F, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2020-10-11 06:26:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20541590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/Liana%20Mir
Summary: That last roll might have been a tad higher speed than Shiasa had advised. But point was, the speed was attainable and they were stress testing a new sort of inertial damper that was supposed to cut down on some of the stronger hyperspace fluctuations when shifting in and out of the mainstream continuum.





	Rest Stop

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Edonohana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/gifts).

"I'm fine, Shiasa," Aleya commented dryly again, putting another stale bottle of water to her lips and wondering why they never could get water to taste good in hyperspace.

The static in the back of her head assured her that her spaceship, Shiasa, was still fretting. This, despite the fact that Aleya had her bandaged leg elevated on a cushion like a good test pilot and wasn't doing anything strenuous while the bandage worked on mending the fracture.

That last roll might have been a tad higher speed than Shiasa had advised. But point was, the speed was attainable and they were stress testing a new sort of inertial damper that was supposed to cut down on some of the stronger hyperspace fluctuations when shifting in and out of the mainstream continuum.

"It was a good eddy," Aleya murmured wistfully.

She loved riding the eddies and whirlpools of hyperspace, dipping in and out of the main timeline, and Shiasa loved it too, for all she worried about Aleya whenever she actually broke a bone or needed to stop for proper medical care. Very little had stopped Aleya when she was younger.

It probably started when Shiasa read up on all the side effects of extended hyperspace travel on pilots. It was addictive, hitting those highs in the brain with a milder effect than most drugs, but certainly as strong as the most common stimulants. It could also eventually drive someone insane, traveling between the underside of the universe and its surface, in and out of time. To say nothing of how much it stressed the body.

"It stresses your body too," Aleya pointed out, took another sip of water, grimaced. "Now, that's just rude. You're ignoring me."

"You have yet to state anything requiring a response," Shiasa replied, an undercurrent of clearly miffed in the supposedly emotionless computerized voice.

Aleya grinned. Enough poking would make the ship talk back eventually and only three turns of saying something wasn't bad at all. "You used to like this stuff," Aleya countered, resisting the urge to pout. "Maybe I should give you a nice bit of space near home to run around in and find another— Ow!"

The staticky buzz of Shiasa's annoyance screeched over the running stream of system reports. Aleya swore but only reflex kept her from unplugging altogether. Loud noises in the brain were part and parcel of installing random bits of tech onto your trusty spaceship and going for another ring through the dazzling shift and slide and sparkly lights of hyperspace. First time out, she'd rammed a wall of plasma, spun a few doughnuts, and had ringing in her ears for three days from the shrieking alarms of that ship. Shiasa at least usually started yelling when things were bad. Right now, she was just annoyed and using ship noises to indicate it.

"I am your spaceship," Shiasa stated unequivocally. "You are my pilot. I'm not sharing you."

"Now look who's pouting."

And she was. A soft whine in the gears. A droid wheeled over and brought Aleya a book and a hot chocolate ration.

"And look who's trying to butter me up."

"Am not," Shiasa retorted.

"Sure you're not." Aleya opened the hot chocolate with a smile.

* * *

Shiasa loved that smile, she thought miserably, little bits and bytes scrolling through emotional data she wasn't supposed to have to deal with. A nice, neutral companion for the road, they said. Never has hangups, they said.

She had hangups—big, fat emotional hangups over the fact that Aleya's gleeful adrenaline-fuelled enthusiasm for hyperspace was catching, that her quickfire reflexes and intelligence running new calculations every time they found a new way to almost kill themselves were incredibly worthy of admiration, and her sheer confidence at the craft and loving way of running her hands over struts and panels and levers and gears and that meticulous attention to detail when working in Shiasa's wiring was... well, very attractive.

And Aleya would never stop flinging herself into danger.

It wasn't even that Shiasa didn't like danger, but they weren't getting any younger, and they didn't actually _need_ to exceed all known safety limits when nosediving through a hyperspace eddy.

"I can hear you thinking," Aleya said out loud.

It was her way of being respectful, since minds were meant to have some private space after all. Shiasa was glad of that, or her burgeoning crush would have been revealed years ago.

There wasn't much Shiasa could do for Aleya with just little things—broken bones, sprained ribs, and the like—just bring her whatever she needed to hand while they waited out the emergency medical kit contents doing their job and quick fixing whatever couldn't wait for a surgeon.

"I know what you could do!" Aleya said. "Bring up those datasets again. I want to see the damage sustained when we rolled."

"Besides your ankle?" Shiasa asked dryly, maintaining her voice as close to neutral as expected while still allowing some of her feelings to pass through.

Aleya waved that off absently. "I thought I heard some grinding in your engine. Tell me you ran the full diagnostic you were supposed to."

"Of course." Shiasa was nothing if not efficient at multitasking. She could restabilize, bring medical supplies, deploy repair bots, batch up test data, and run a full diagnostic simultaneously without squealing a bolt. She pulled the latest capacity assessment on Aleya from her full-on hyperspace mode when calculating midstream, cut down the size of the data file ruthlessly, then dumped it into Aleya's brain.

"Ow. Thanks, Shiasa. Such a good bedside manner." Aleya hissed and guzzled the rest of her hot chocolate, then started sorting through the data, her lovely brain working away at it as dutifully as a computer but with such astounding leaps of logic and inductive reasoning that Shiasa just sat back and watched with an admiring sigh.

And oh! That was interesting.

"You think the damper would let us do a slow spin into an eddy and feel out the time shifts before hitting them."

Aleya leaned down and felt her ankle. Eight percent healed, enough to fly on. She grinned. "Want to give it a go?"

And ah, who could resist that face? Shiasa revved up the applicable drives, dusted off her thrusters as she recalled the bots that had been retuning them, and brought the pilot chair online.

* * *

Aleya slid into the pilot chair, like coming home. Her hands caressed the grips. She tickled that warm feeling in the back of her head.

_You know, Shiasa,_ she thought a little louder than usual. _I love you too._

A pause, a skip in the rhythm of an internal core, then they were off, winging their way once more at inadvisable speeds to do something no one had ever successfully done before.

Together.


End file.
